Heidi Erwin Cartoon Sun Drawing
heidi erwin
Pips
Domino logic puzzle game for The New York Times.
What: I led game design of this logic puzzle. I pitched this game alongside a producer and product designer. I also constructed puzzles and developed the puzzle design philosophy for this game.
When: 2024 -2025
Skills: Game Design, Prototyping, Puzzle Design
Overview

This page is a work in progress. Last updated August 2025.


Origins

Paper prototypes from the game jams where this idea was developed:

Yellow sticky notes cut into the shape of dominoes placed on a 4x4 grid on white paper, on which each column and row are labeled with a number.
Game Jam domino paper prototype.

And mockups from that game jam:

Game Design Iteration

We explored a few variants of the base concept during early iteration. This included using symbols instead of numbers, a sudoku variant where each row and column could only contain unique values, and pieces that weren't 2-by-1 in size.


Some of the condition tag variants that our UI/UX designer tested out with a "worst case scenario" puzzle I set up:

We also explored differnt ways to show that individual conditions had been met:

After these explorations, we decided that there were several game design reasons to NOT show feedback each time an individual region's requirement is correctly met:

1. Accidentally implying that a piece definitely belongs there in the overall solution. Tricky balance to strike to tell someone that the condition is met without also implying that that piece is correct.

2. Individual region confirmation is just not as important as overall board confirmation: You can’t successfully solve a Pips puzzle only thinking in terms of regions (e.g. you can’t always just meet the requirements of the first region you see and be correct overall). You need to think about ALL of the regions and the board generally.

3. There's already a lot going on on the board during gameplay (visually, the board is changing). It could feel cluttered, especially for people who are like “yeah I know that’s right... it’s the number 4. You didn’t need to tell me that.”

4. We don’t want people to think that pieces are locked into place. Pieces should always feel like they can be picked back up.

5. Given the context of the NYT games portfolio, it made sense to follow the pattern of other NYT games: The Mini + Sudoku (Tell the player when they're incorrect, and say nothing if there's no issue).
Making Puzzles
Illustration from The Little Prince of what may look like a hat but is in fact a snake that swallowed an elephant.